


Cactus

by Tigerine (sealink)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 16:57:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9667064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sealink/pseuds/Tigerine
Summary: McCree and Genji return from a mission a little worse for wear, but a close call has made Jesse ready to push at the edges of Genji's flimsy excuses and find a place where he can worm his way into Genji's heart.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nosferatao](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosferatao/gifts).



> Happy Valentine's Day! One of your prompts was Blackwatch/pre-fall Overwatch and a little bit of hurt/comfort after one of them gets back from a mission and needs some first aid. This would be just before the fall of the Shimada clan (and Genji's exit from Overwatch.) I hope you find this satisfactory!

"Grab my hat, would you?"

Genji snatches it off the seat of the runabout and follows the grime-caked McCree into the locker room, standing well back from the door.

"It is still bleeding."

"It'll keep until I've had a shower."

Genji's visor tracks McCree's movements as he opens the locker and unbuckles his belt. "You should see Dr. Ziegler."

"Isn't worth bothering her about at this hour," McCree replies, a hitch in his breathing as he unholsters his gun and sets it to the side. "I'll see her once it's daylight out."

"I am sure she would tend to you at any hour, if she knew you were hurt."

"I've had hornet stings worse than this," he replies with some effort. "If you hadn't deflected those other bullets, mighta been a different story. For now, I'll just patch up what I can, wait for her blessing in the morning."

"If I had been faster, you would not even have the graze."

McCree shrugs out of his button-down shirt, letting his breath out slow. "Guess that's a mystery solved that didn't need solvin'."

"What is?"

"Whether you're faster'n a bullet." His cowboy boots clatter in the bottom of the locker, and he peels his muddy pants off with small grunts of discomfort.

"I am faster than a bullet, when I know it is coming." The faint whirr of his heat exchangers blends into the white noise of the air conditioner.

"And when you don't know?" McCree teases him as he sits down on the bench, prying his calves free of the clingy pants. His socks he strips off and leaves in soggy, dirty piles. "Say when it's thunderin' and lightnin' everywhere?"

"...I am faster than six bullets."

McCree hacks a laugh and then immediately looks regretful, putting a hand to the bullet burn on his side. "God Almighty," he mumbles.

“Let me see.” Genji pulls McCree’s arm up, using his fingers to see how much of it is burn and how much of it is broken skin. The scab breaks open, and blood wells up into the space where it had been closed up. Genji leans back. "...I can still wake Dr. Ziegler."

"Nope," McCree sucks himself up straight, leaving his pants on the floor like a locust that's shed its skin, his underwear a once-red rind of muck on the inside. Stiffly, he walks over the cold tile toward the showers.

"I will get the medkit."

"It's right there," McCree protests, spinning the taps on. "Isn’t it more important to make sure I don't get dizzy and hit my head?"

"You would have had more problems walking if you were dizzy," Genji replies from the doorway.

"That's true." McCree steps underneath the steaming spray, soaking himself. Water rolls off his beard unevenly until he lifts his head and lets the stream beat directly into his chin. Genji has his arms crossed over his chest when McCree pushes his wet hair back from his face. "Plenty of room in here for two if you want to join me."

"I am not properly shielded against water."

It's a blatant lie, given the events of the evening, but McCree chuckles, taking a big pump of soap from the dispenser on the wall and scratching it through his hair and beard. "Better tell the brass that before they send you out in a thunderstorm again."

"I will."

McCree steps out of the spray, soaping up the hair on his chest, reaching behind to scratch soap up his back and over his ass. He squats a little, rubbing lather over his balls and spreading it down over his thighs.

It's hard to tell if Genji is still watching--he's so quiet that he seems to appear and disappear, like magic--or if he is, what he's thinking. McCree crouches and soaps up his calves and worms his sudsy fingers between his toes. Surreptitiously, he checks the door.

Genji's feet are still at the threshold.

Pretending to hold up a bit of toe lint for inspection, McCree stands up and gives no indication that he knows exactly how Genji is watching him. Turning back to the shower, he steps into the spray again, and gives a little more voice to a moan of pleasure at the hot water on his back. Feeling more relaxed with every minute, he whistles lazily. It echoes off the tile.

He half-expects Genji to ask what the song is, but the question doesn't come, and when he turns to look again, Genji is gone.

McCree turns the taps off, slinging water from his arms and wringing it out of his hair. His feet slap in the puddles on the shower floor.

Plucking a towel off the attendant's cart, McCree wraps it around his hips and drapes another over his head to ruffle his hair dry.

"You are moving better." Genji's voice is flat, with almost practiced disinterest.

"Feelin’ better," McCree counters, pulling the towel off his head in a rush and using the corners to clean his ears. Genji has the medkit open on a bench, several plasters out and ready to be applied. "See you've been busy."

"I would like to get to bed sometime tonight." He pauses. "I will also need to go by the medical bay in the morning, and it would be better to have some sleep."

"Hnh," McCree grunts, and he sits on the bench, lifting his arm as Genji opens a pack of disinfecting swabs. Daintily, Genji begins to clean the burned edges of the graze along his ribs. "You've got a tender hand."

"Mm."

"Learn that from Angela?"

Genji presses the swab into the raw pink flesh flayed bare by the bullet and McCree swears. "God _damn_ it, Genji."

"You were saying?"

"You did that on purpose." McCree looks down at Genji's hand now that it's resumed dabbing primly at the wound. "Prickly as a cholla and twice as mean."

Genji chuckles, but it's a sarcastic, grim sound in a metallic frame. "I can be meaner."

"I'll pass, thank you."

"Mm," Genji hums again, beginning to butterfly the wound closed.

McCree looks at the visor, which gives no hint as to Genji's state of mind. "Doin' a pretty good job at patchin' me up."

"Got in some trouble myself once or twice," Genji muses, his fingers holding McCree's skin together as the other hand presses the butterfly in place. "I could not go to the family doctor with a split lip."

"What does the son of a yakuza kingpin fight about?"

"The same thing anyone fights over. Money." Genji pauses. "Lovers. Pride." There isn't any more forthcoming, no explanation of loves lost or pride wounded. But it's the most candid Genji's been with anyone, much less McCree. "You look surprised."

"Someone with your kinda power?" McCree huffs a humorless laugh. "Thought you all would fight over something bigger."

"Those things are enough." He spreads antibiotic over the wound and then pulls open a plaster, fixing it in place with swift, choppy motions. "But with power like ours, it is easy to draw other people into what should be private arguments."

"The money?" McCree watches Genji open another disinfecting swab and begin brushing it over a scrape on his face. "Or the dragons?"

"Both." Genji dots antibiotic ointment on McCree’s face, pressing it into the cuts. “I don’t see any other injuries that need to be taken care of.”

Genji’s clipped tone and javelin-like application of the ointment lets McCree know he’s hit a nerve.  McCree, nonplussed, barrels down his line of questioning. “You’ll still have the dragons at least, even after the Shimada clan’s been brought down.”

Genji’s head tilts down, looking at his hands, or perhaps McCree’s bandaged ribs, just below his heart. “Without family, my choices are to wander or die.”

“And which one are you gonna do?”

Genji collects the trash from the plasters and swabs into one hand, crushing it in his fist. “I already had my choice to die. If I was going to do it, I should have done it then.”

“So you’ll just leave when accounts are settled.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t have to.” McCree stands up, walking back to his locker and pulling out a set of sweats that smell moderately clean from one of the shelves. “No one’s forcing you out, and I’m sure Overwatch would like having a man with your talents on the payroll for keeps.” He stops halfway, holding his breath as he wriggles into the sweatshirt and smooths it down over his wounded side. “Could get used to havin’ you around.”

“Overwatch is not a replacement for my family and you are not a replacement for my brother.”

“Well, thank heaven for that.” McCree reaches into his gun holster and pulls out a keycard, plain grey with one black stripe, the kind that doesn’t require security clearance to have. He waggles it between his fingers, walking toward Genji.

Genji makes a noise that sounds like a soft snort. “This again.” He looks down for a moment and then lifts his head. “You just can’t take no for an answer.”

“I ain’t in the habit of second-guessing what I want.”

“But you think I’m in the habit of second-guessing what I want.”

McCree shrugs, sitting down heavily on the bench further down from Genji, reaching over to tap the keycard against the metal plating on his thigh. “You’re still a man under all that, and a man’s got needs.”

He turns the card on its edge, like a shuriken, and drags it over the plating, a grating sound that disappears when he runs out of plating, over the tense newskin that keeps Genji’s muscles warm and protected from the elements. Genji’s visor follows McCree’s hand, and then tilts up, facing him directly instead of watching the process, as if not watching will make it stop happening.

Anyone might idly scratch an itch in this way, running the hard plastic card over their skin, and McCree does the same thing now, pushing the edge into Genji’s flesh and drawing it up. The newskin gives—that’s flesh there, and armor there—making a roadmap to what parts of Genji are man and machine.

McCree’s eyes, held fast by the card until now, flick up to Genji’s visor. “If you weren’t into men, you’d have used that as an excuse, given all the other excuses you’ve thrown.”

Genji’s heat exchangers whirr and then hiss softly, like release of bubbles from a champagne bottle, and retract into his shoulders. “I could just not want to sleep with you.”

“You haven’t said that either.” The corner of the card makes a point in Genji’s senses, like a fingertip, but harder. Up his ribs it goes, bone, bone, titanium, bone, a sensitive metronome buried in meat and metal. McCree hears Genji suck in a sudden breath. He pulls away from the singularity that’s carving whorls of electricity through him and looks down at the floor. His hands grip the edge of the bench.

McCree feathers the card again and lays it down on the bench with a snap of plastic, getting to his feet. He leans over to pick up his dirty clothes and boots with a groan, jams his sidearm back into the holster and loops the belt over his arm. The last piece, his hat, he plants on his head and turns to look at Genji.

Genji has been watching him, but he doesn’t speak up at McCree’s expectant look. McCree pinches the brim of his hat between forefinger and thumb and reaches out to retrieve his keycard.

Genji’s hand fastens around McCree’s wrist like a vise. “If you want to do this, then we will do it my way.”

“And what is ‘your way’, darlin’?”

“If you have persisted this long in asking, I don’t think you will object to letting me run the show.” He tilts his head, daring McCree to say otherwise.

McCree chuckles, a rich sound that echoes around the locker room. “It’s always been your show.” He picks the keycard up, rolling it over his fingers. “I hope you’ll take it easy on me, seein’ as how I’m a little banged up.”

“We’ll see,” Genji replies evasively, and McCree hoots an appreciative laugh, draping his arm around Genji’s shoulders as he stands up.

“I’m sure I’ll still be worth your while.” He ambles stiffly toward the doorway, pressing the warmth of his fingertips against the cool metal of Genji’s shoulder plate. “I can show the way, just might be a minute.”

“I know the way,” Genji answers.

McCree’s step drifts to a pensive pause and then he chuckles again.

The ribbon at the back of Genji’s head flutters behind him like a pennant, and Genji a knight in shining armor. Loosely, it trails over McCree’s bare forearm, and sends a shiver of anticipation all the way down to his toes.  


End file.
